Flashback - week 1

Week one was a bit of an anti-climax... After all the talking, philosophising, theorising, dreaming, fantasizing we'd done about the project, reality couldn't really live up to expectations... And it was just as well, we needed to get our feet back on the ground. Reading Vigotsky, Foucault and Gramsci was enlightening, but it couldn't help us to deal with the realities of the school.

I arrived half-way through the week to find the school in total chaos: general start-of-year clean up. All students, parents and teachers were supposed to help cleaning and doing the school up, but in fact, the only ones working were us - the teachers sent by the UFRJ-mar project. And there was a lot of work to do, there still is. I helped reorganising the library, others did heavier work like breaking toilets, walls, replacing broken roof tiles, painting... Basically, the school's got so little money that it can't afford to pay anyone to do all this, and has to rely on voluntary work. The library is still being relocated and so is the computer room - so for the moment there's no computer and no internet in the school for us to use. But there will be at some point soon, and I intend to create a blog or a website with some of my students...

After a couple of days of cleaning up we finally got to start the academic year, to start teaching. The first classes were spent asking the students about themselves, what they liked and what they had done last year in PCSA (communication and art, my subject) - film, newspaper, theatre... None of them seemed to have found last year's projects particularly exciting, most couldn't remember what they had done and when they could, only had criticisms to make.... Hm, encouraging, is that what I want them to be like at the end of the year?? It basically seemed like they hadn't taken anything away from lats year's PCSA classes and weren't that bothered about it... First blow to our initial enthusiasm. But it's ok, students are like this we were told, they usually don't realise that they're learning...

I teach five classes, of all levels - ages from 11 to 14-15 years old. There are about 30 kids in each class. 150 names to remember. Plus the staff. Ouch! I still don't know all of their names, and still mix Maique up with Mairone, Cleyton with Uilson, Kettelen with Karoline. We've also got a Victor Hugo, a Roger Walker, a Kennedy, a Washington and an Elvis... the list is endless, they've all got extremely inventive names!